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Dingo genes provide clue to Australia's past

MARK COLVIN: Genetic research is shedding new light on how and when the dingo reached Australia.

Dingoes were here long before white settlement and in the late 1800s they were regarded as such a pest that farmers and governments built a fence more than 5,500 kilometres long against them.

The new genetic research suggests that Australia is home not to one type of dingo, but two.

And it's possible the dingo's genetic past will give us new and fascinating clues to Australia's history, hundreds of years before European colonisation.

William Verity reports.

NEWS REPORT (Archival): A full scale search in the Ayers Rock area today failed to find any trace of a nine-week-old baby girl, believed to have been taken by a dingo or wild dog last night.

WILLIAM VERITY: Even before a dingo took Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru almost 35 years ago, Australians have had an ambivalent attitude to our native dog.

While there are half a dozen recognised Australian breeds of dog - some of them, such as the kelpie and the cattle dog, with large doses of dingo - the dog itself remains unrecognised and for many unloved.

Genetic research into the dingo didn't start until 1995, when Professor Alan Wilton from the University of NSW began the work to define a purebred dingo.

After his early death in 2011, his work was taken over by his colleague, geneticist Professor Bill Ballard.

Now, in work about to be published by one of his PhD students, Kylie Cairns, it appears that we have not one type of dingo, but two.

BILL BALLARD: The most recent research is saying yes, there is genetic sub-division within the dingoes and yes, I would argue that there are at least two different lineages of dingoes within Australia.

WILLIAM VERITY: The research suggests that one lineage of dingo exists in the north-west, from north of Brisbane to Perth, while another, much more recent lineage, exists south of Brisbane to Victoria, and particularly in alpine areas.

The research is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it may well lead to the conclusion that dingoes have inhabited Australia well before the earliest fossils, 3,500 years ago.

But the other implication is likely to tell us far more about humans than dogs. It may point to ocean traders arriving on the east coast of Australia many hundreds of years before European colonisation.

BILL BALLARD: The lineages diverged outside of Australia. Potentially there were two independent introductions. One introduction may have occurred when New Guinea and Australia were connected by a land bridge, and the other may have arrived through seafaring traders.

WILLIAM VERITY: The challenge now, according to Professor Ballard, is to identify their lineages and to try to keep them distinct.

BILL BALLARD: One of the things that now needs to be done is to ensure that like lineages of dingoes are actually mated together.

WILLIAM VERITY: And in order to finally define what we mean by a purebred dingo, dingo remains from before European settlement and kept at the Western Australian Museum, are about to be analysed by the ancient DNA laboratory at the University of Adelaide.

BILL BALLARD: It will give us some sense of time and some sense of space and some sense of understanding of what a dingo was before white humans arrived in Australia.

WILLIAM VERITY: If there is renewed interest in dingos, it will be good news for Lucille Ellem, president of the Australian Native Dog Society.

She was a founder member of the nation's first dingo sanctuary, south of Sydney, in 1976.

It may come as no surprise that she believes the dingo is a much misunderstood animal, and the cause was not helped by the Chamberlain case.

LUCILLE ELLEM: What it did was it poisoned everybody to think that dingoes were mean, spiteful, vicious and angry animals, which they're not.

Dingoes don't go out and randomly savage herds of cattle and masses of animals. They only kill to eat, which is normal in the wild.

WILLIAM VERITY: For Lucille Ellem, the fact that the dingo is not even recognised as a breed of dog speaks volumes for a national attitude that needs to change.

LUCILLE ELLEM: The dingo isn't recognised as a wonderful breed of our country - a feral animal that has to be shot.

It's not recognised, respected and looked at in an awesome way as, wow, look what we've got in our country.

MARK COLVIN: More genetic research uncovering the history of the dingo is expected later this year. William Verity with that report.